XFX 9600GSO 384mb vs Sapphire HD4670 512mb

XFX 9600GSO Packaging & Appearance

XFX are renowned here at OC3D for being the best in the business when it comes to presenting high-end GPU's and motherboard's so I was interested to see if these same high standards would be carried through on cheaper cards. Sure enough the quality of materials used are the same here as they are for the range topping GTX280. The box features a picturesque outer sleeve with the '9' series dominating the front, along with a few unused bullets and a brief description of the card. The rear of the outer sleeve is where you will find the feature list and various warnings regarding the included Company of Heroes game. The sides of the box display the recommended specification (500w PSU single/600w SLI) and the need for a 6 pin PCIe cable. The remaining side displays the usual 'Nsist on Nvidia' blurb.

The inner box is a lime green affair, and synonymous with XFX which is both sturdy and adequate enough in preventing anything but deliberate crushing of the box. A cutout shows the card itself behind a plastic window. Opening the box we can see the card in all its glory. Surprising and somewhat worrying, the card is not supplied in any anti-static bag although the cardboard and foam packaging should most likely prevent any static from reaching the card anyway. It would be nice to have that little reassurance, regardless.

The included accessories are basic but enough to get you going with the graphics card. Company of Heroes, along with the DX10 patch is the high point and a nice addition to what is a mid-range package. Unfortunately, there is no VGA to DVI adapter so hopefully your monitor will natively support DVI or you have a spare adapter yourself. Also missing is a molex to PCIe 6-pin adapter so ensure you have a 6-pin PCIe cable on your PSU.

The card itself is a very sleek affair, being single slot and cooled by a half size fan/heatsink assembly.. Being just 8.4 inches long it could quite easily fit in an media pc and while the fan is small it is only really audible when the card is put under stress. At full tilt, the fan can be a little whiny but that's the price you pay for such small form factor cooling I guess.

The actual cooler is a full copper affair which is a true bonus considering that many manufacturers tend to cheap out and use aluminium of late. Or if you are 'lucky', copper coated aluminium. One problem with a cooler design such as this is that the hot air is expelled into the case, so decent case cooling is a prerequisite. I was also slightly concerned that not only is there no cooling on the power regulators but the hot air being exhausted from the GPU will be blowing over them. The heatsink is easy enough to access with the removal of 6 small screws and so cleaning should not be an issue.

Going that one step further, we removed the heatsink assembly to investigate the application of Thermal Interface Material (TIM). The contact area was good but the amount of putty like material was a tad excessive. The memory had thermal pads in place of TIM and notable was the addition of an extra pad cooling an empty space for memory. This is perhaps a throwback to the 512mb card which people were soft modding to 8800GTS! Sadly there will be no such shenanigans with this card.

Overall, a very nice looking card which is well presented in typical XFX style. I do like a card with a black PCB as it can find itself at home in any colour coordinated PC build. Sadly, the same cannot be said about other manufacturers, so a big thumbs up to XFX and NVIDIA for sticking to the classic black PCB. The full copper block is a major plus but the actual design is poorly thought out. Hopefully the MOSFETS will not be affected when we come to put the card under a full days worth of testing.

That shows you.. clock speed isn't anything compared to realworld performance, seeing that the 9600GSO can perform better and it has lower clock speeds. I think that is brilliant, personally nVidia are loosing on the higher end market due to the ATi HD4870 etc but they are king of the mid-budget market

There isn't just one spelling "blooper." The entire article is rife with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. I kept reading for the information, but the presentation was so horrid it was nearly unbearable.

On the intro page alone I count 3 mistakes the most horrible of which is the use of "there" when "their" is the word that should be used. Ugh.

I reckon Nvidia aren't being beaten on the top end of the market, for anyone with loads of cash (i.e. me) the 280GTX presents a great single card solution, with less scaling issues in dual card set up.

Back on topic, great review, very thorough, nice to see the settings in Crysis. I was thinking about the 4670 as a nice card to put in a friends machine. Maybe a 9600GSO might be a better bet, but the 9800GT's look good and they are only about £20 on top.

Will you be using Crysis Warhawk to benchmark things in the future, what with the engine optimising?

That shows you.. clock speed isn't anything compared to realworld performance, seeing that the 9600GSO can perform better and it has lower clock speeds. I think that is brilliant, personally nVidia are loosing on the higher end market due to the ATi HD4870 etc but they are king of the mid-budget market

Glad you liked the review. It does appear that NVidia and ATI have changed places.

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Diablo'

I reckon Nvidia aren't being beaten on the top end of the market, for anyone with loads of cash (i.e. me) the 280GTX presents a great single card solution, with less scaling issues in dual card set up.

Back on topic, great review, very thorough, nice to see the settings in Crysis. I was thinking about the 4670 as a nice card to put in a friends machine. Maybe a 9600GSO might be a better bet, but the 9800GT's look good and they are only about £20 on top.

Will you be using Crysis Warhawk to benchmark things in the future, what with the engine optimising?

I'll be reviewing the 9800GT shortly and will be using the GSO and 4670 for comparison so keep checking the site buddy. Benchmarking with Warhawk will depend on the game engine itself and the challenge it presents to GPU's.

Very nice. It is nice to see this forum so alive compared to other ones that I have been on, I really enjoy it and I am going to stick around

I just wish that I could now become a reviewer seeing the fun jobs you guys get!! It also helps that I push my system unbelievably high on air.. I love it but I do realise that I can screw the lot up if I am not careful..

Very nice. It is nice to see this forum so alive compared to other ones that I have been on, I really enjoy it and I am going to stick around

I just wish that I could now become a reviewer seeing the fun jobs you guys get!! It also helps that I push my system unbelievably high on air.. I love it but I do realise that I can screw the lot up if I am not careful..

Reviewing can be fun and it is great to get the latest kit to try out but it is sometimes a thankless task (see above), especially when you consider the time and effort that is put into said reviews for the benefit of others. One must learn not to rise to the bait I guess.

Good luck in pushing your setup, which should become easier now the cold weather is on its way.

I'm just after looking at Komplett.ie and I can get the 4670 for €78 and the 9600GSO for €87. In the interest of Linux drivers I think the 9600 would be the better buy for me, if I give it a bit of time that is....

Anyway another great review btw.

Just curious, do you find reviewing fun or is it pretty routine after a while?

Registered because I found this review curious, and it's not only this one about the 4670. I think that in the rush of comparing price and performance, many reviewers usually put against the HD4670 the 9600GSO, forgetting other fundamental things;

1-the cards are of totally different sizes and the 9600GSO won't fit many standard OEM cases while the 4670 will.

2-The HD4670 consumes far less power, with no 6 pin connector, so I'd not consider an aluminum heatsink mediocre when power consumption is also mediocre compared to the rival card.

Despite being similar in price or performance, I think we're comparing very different cards, for different target buyers. With the 4670 you can be sure you can upgrade almost any HTPC or any Dell or HP case, without worrying about your card intersecting something. The HD4670 is maybe the most important card of this year because after the HD2600/3600 and GF8600 fiasco, it's the first mainstream card in mainstream format in a long time (small PCB, no 6pin power) and it's most direct competitor should be the 9500GT (which is not) while the 9600GSO is better aligned with the HD3850.

In this perspective nvidia is still sadly falling short of the objectives even in the midrange and as of direct competition, I'd rather see the HD4670 leading alone for the moment.

In this perspective nvidia is still sadly falling short of the objectives even in the midrange and as of direct competition, I'd rather see the HD4670 leading alone for the moment.

Yeah it's pretty much Red all across the board atm.

Nvidia took a right chance with the GT200 with its huge die size - it's not exactly cheap for the them to make, and thanks to their price drops you can be sure they're not selling them for much of a profit anymore.

ATi's RV770 was a much better chip in many respects, it performs great and it's a lot cheaper for the them to make (55nm V 65nm and a much smaller die).

1-the cards are of totally different sizes and the 9600GSO won't fit many standard OEM cases while the 4670 will.

2-The HD4670 consumes far less power, with no 6 pin connector, so I'd not consider an aluminum heatsink mediocre when power consumption is also mediocre compared to the rival card.

You make some good points X-thing, welcome to the forum too!

While I agree the cards are different sizes, the performance and price are still similar which make for a valid comparison. I agree that they could be considered for different markets, SFF being one of them and as such this was also mentioned in the review. However, when someone goes shopping, especially someone not willing to spend vast amounts of cash, will surely want to see how much performance they can get for their cash, bang per buck as it were and so the cards were compared on this basis.

I criticised the use of aluminium as if they had used copper then the fan might not have spun up so fast, making for more efficient cooling properties. As you previously pointed out, buyers of SFF and media centers etc may well be considering this card. If it were me shopping for such a card, I would want a near silent cooler, which sadly the 4670 has not, due in part to the aluminium heatsink.

We couldn't really compare the 9600GSO against the 3850 as that card is previous generation so would be unfair and to be quite honest uninteresting. Apart from the fact, we do not always have every card in this and the last generation from which to choose.

Yes webbo, I completely understand your reasoning; price and availability rule when it comes to the common buyer, and I totally agree here.

Not particularly this but as I said before, many other sites the put the 4670 too much on the personal with the GSO. Yes especially where I live or in the USA it is an absolute steal, however, there are other scenarios the 4670 is the way to go and maybe that could have been made clearer in the conclusions, because it's there that most people jump before reading the whole review and sometimes it does not just "come down to what screen you are looking to game on"; I couldn't use my HD3850 in my sister's 350W PSU PC, and had to swap it with a 4670 first. People seeking quad display with graphics performance will get lots of power savings and cooler systems with two of them compared to two 9600GSOs or 3850s.

The fan is loud, yes, that aluminum heatsink is Sapphire's way to spare some money,the stock cooler is much better. I have also seen a dual slot version from asus, big silent fan on top, that should be nice for HTPCs.

Anyway, let me say that your review was very precise and well made,was interesting to see the slight superiority of the 9600GSO, with the 4670 taking over @ high resolutions, probably because of the 512M of RAM vs 384 of the GSO.

P.S: Just a small question on the sapphire cooler, was it loud or very loud, because I think this is the model I am getting to replace the 3850.

Noise is subjective m8. I wouldn't say it would be 'louder' than the 3850 but due to the fans size you may notice it more because of the whine, especially when it is under load. In windows it was fairly quiet, just a slight 'hum' but as soon as you did something 3D intensive and the fan spun up it resembled a very angry hornet.

note: i am willing to bet others on this forum with better tools could likely put my overclocks on this card to shame.

I'd rather think you've been quite lucky with that card because more or less all review sites around have not been able to get much further of 800 MHz for the core and 2100MHz for the memory. What brand was it?

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